Working as an operations intern for the Hach
Company,
a Danaher subsidiary in Loveland, Colorado, Kevin Kosefeski built an
optimization model in Excel to determine the weekly production
schedule of hand-held digital test strip readers used in the pool
and spa market. The test strip readers were manufactured for Hach at
a Danaher factory in Shanghai, China. The excel model covered a
future one-year
period and considered forecasted weekly demand, inventory holding
cost, maximum unit production capacity, six week sea-shipping time,
Chinese holidays, and excess capacity desired during the peak of
seasonal demand. The Solver goal was minimization of inventory
holding cost. In addition to building the model, Kevin trained the
company’s low-cost-region manager on the use of Solver and provided
her with the ability to update the production plan as the forecast
changed. The Hach Vice-President of Operations remarked, “Kevin was given
very little direction on his project. I framed up the problem and
told
him to go find the right people to work with. This was a complicated
cross-country, multi-site, multi-continent problem, and Kevin plowed
right ahead and provided Hach with a useful product for the future.”